Child Rights

Italy is welcoming 19 children who were evacuated from Gaza by the World Health Organization. They’ll receive advanced medical treatment in several hospitals across the country.

Imagine walking for days and nights to escape gunfire. You carry your child in your arms, guiding them through the darkness to avoid drone attacks. You have no food, no water, and nowhere safe to go.

This is the reality for families in Darfur and across Sudan, where civilians are being trapped, targeted, and terrorised as the country’s brutal war enters its third year. In el-Fasher and other parts of Darfur, entire communities have been besieged. Those who try to flee are attacked; those who remain face starvation, violence, and disease.

Behind these headlines are women and children who are suffering the most. Sexual violence is being used systematically to punish, to terrorise, and to destroy. Women and girls are abducted, forced to work for armed groups during the day, and then assaulted at night, often in front of others. Many survivors are children themselves. Some of the girls who have become pregnant through rape are so young and malnourished that they are unable to feed their babies.

Perpetrators no longer attempt to hide their crimes. Violence has become so widespread that recording or documenting cases can cost you your life. In Tawila, North Darfur, only one clinic run by Doctors Without Borders can provide care for rape survivors.

Boys are also being drawn into the conflict. Over the past 10 days, three trucks filled with children were reported heading towards Nyala, while in South Darfur, children are being armed and sent to fight. Families are disappearing without a trace.

Aid workers are also targeted. They are being kidnapped for ransom, assaulted, sometimes killed, and targeted because armed groups believe humanitarian organisations can pay. Many of those delivering aid are Sudanese women who risk their lives every day to bring food, water, and protection services to others.

Violence has also taken on an ethnic dimension. One displaced person told us, “I cannot go back, they will know by my skin colour which tribe I am from, and they will kill me.”

Sudan is now the world’s largest displacement crisis and one of its most severe humanitarian emergencies. More than 30 million people need urgent assistance. Fifteen million have been forced from their homes. Hunger and cholera are spreading fast. Clinics have been destroyed, schools are closed, and 13 million children are out of school, their education and futures slipping away.

Yet even amid this devastation, Sudanese women’s organisations are leading the response. They are running safe spaces, supporting survivors of violence, and keeping children learning where they can. They know their communities and continue their work despite constant danger. Their courage deserves not only recognition but also support.

The humanitarian response, however, remains catastrophically underfunded. Only about a quarter of what is needed has been received. Without immediate resources, millions will be left without food, medical care, or shelter as famine looms. Funding protection and psychosocial support for women and children is not optional. It is life-saving.

And this is not only a crisis of violence but also a crisis of indifference. Each day the world looks away, more lives are lost and more futures erased. The international community must support investigations into war crimes, including sexual violence, ethnic killings, and attacks on aid workers. Silence is not neutrality. Silence gives a blank cheque for horror to continue.

We must act now, urgently. Governments and donors must fully fund the humanitarian response and ensure access for those delivering aid. They must press all parties to immediately stop attacks on civilians, guarantee safe passage for those fleeing, and allow relief operations to reach those cut off by the fighting.

Humanitarian workers and grassroots organisations are risking their lives so that others might live. The world must match their courage with urgent action.

Above all, Sudan’s women and girls must be part of shaping peace. They are already leading by organising, sheltering, and rebuilding amid the chaos. Their courage offers a glimpse of the country Sudan could still become.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Hamed and Rida Aliwa have taken up the responsibility of raising dozens of their grandchildren after they lost five of their sons because of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Israeli restrictions on the entry of heavy machinery are crippling Gaza City’s efforts to clear debris and rebuild critical infrastructure, the city’s mayor says, as tens of thousands of tonnes of unexploded Israeli bombs threaten lives across the Gaza Strip.

In a Sunday news conference, Mayor Yahya al-Sarraj said Gaza City requires at least 250 heavy vehicles and 1,000 tonnes of cement to maintain water networks and construct wells.

Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from az-Zawayda in Gaza, said only six trucks had entered the territory.

At least 9,000 Palestinians remain buried under the rubble. But the new equipment is being prioritised for recovering the remains of Israeli captives, rather than assisting Palestinians in locating their loved ones still trapped beneath rubble.

“Palestinians say they know there won’t be any developments in the ceasefire until the bodies of all the Israeli captives are returned,” Khoudary said.

Footage circulating on social media showed Red Cross vehicles arriving after meetings with Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, to guide them to the location of an Israeli captive in southern Rafah.

An Israeli government spokesperson said that to search for captives’ remains, the Red Cross and Egyptian teams have been permitted beyond the ceasefire’s “yellow line”, which allows Israel to retain control over 58 percent of the besieged enclave.

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Amman, said Israel spent two weeks insisting that Hamas knew the locations of all the captives’ bodies.

“Two weeks into that, Israel has now allowed Egyptian teams and heavy machinery to enter the Gaza Strip to assist in the mammoth task of removing debris, of trying to get to the tunnels or underneath the homes or structures that the captives were held in and killed in,” she said.

Odeh added that Hamas had been unable to access a tunnel for two weeks due to the damage caused by Israeli bombing. “That change of policy is coming without explanation from Israel,” she said, noting that the Red Cross and Hamas have also been allowed to help locate potential burial sites under the rubble.

Netanyahu: ‘We control Gaza’

Meanwhile, on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to reassert political authority at home, saying that Israel controls which foreign forces may operate in Gaza.

“We control our own security, and we have made clear to international forces that Israel will decide which forces are unacceptable to us – and that is how we act and will continue to act,” he said. “This is, of course, accepted by the United States, as its most senior representatives expressed in recent days.”

Odeh explained that Netanyahu’s statements are intended to reassure the far-right base in Israel, which thinks he’s no longer calling the shots.

Those currently overseeing the ceasefire do not appear to be Israeli soldiers or army leadership, she explained, with Washington “requesting that Israel notify it ahead of time of any attack that Israel might be planning to conduct inside Gaza”.

Odeh noted that Israel’s insistence on controlling which foreign actors operate in Gaza – combined with the limited access for reconstruction – underscores a broader strategy to maintain political support at home.

Unexploded bombs a threat

Reconstruction in Gaza faces further obstacles from unexploded ordnance. Nicholas Torbet, Middle East director at HALO Trust in the United Kingdom, said Gaza is “essentially one giant city” where every part has been struck by explosives.

“Some munitions are designed to linger, but what we’re concerned about in Gaza is ordnance that is expected to explode upon impact but hasn’t,” he told Al Jazeera.

Torbet said clearing explosives is slowing the reconstruction process. His teams plan to work directly within communities to safely remove bombs rather than marking off large areas indefinitely. “The best way to dispose of a bomb is to use a small amount of explosives to blow it up,” he explained.

Torbet added that the necessary equipment is relatively simple and can be transported in small vehicles or by hand, and progress is beginning to take place.

The scale of explosives dropped by Israel has left Gaza littered with deadly remnants.

Mahmoud Basal, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defence, told Al Jazeera that Israel dropped at least 200,000 tonnes of explosives on the territory, with roughly 70,000 tonnes failing to detonate.

Children have been particularly affected, often mistaking bombs for toys. Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili reported the case of seven-year-old Yahya Shorbasi and his sister Nabila, who were playing outside when they found what appeared to be a toy.

“They found a regular children’s toy – just an ordinary one. The girl was holding it. Then the boy took it and started tapping it with a coin. Suddenly, we heard the sound of an explosion. It went off in their hands,” their mother Latifa Shorbasi told Al Jazeera.

Yahya’s right arm had to be amputated, while Nabila remains in intensive care.

Dr Harriet, an emergency doctor at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, described the situation as “a public health catastrophe waiting to unfold”. She said children are being injured by items that look harmless – toys, cans, or debris – but are actually live explosives.

United Nations Mine Action Service head Luke David Irving said 328 people have already been killed or injured by unexploded ordnance since October 2023.

Tens of thousands of tonnes of bombs, including landmines, mortar rounds, and large bombs capable of flattening concrete buildings, remain buried across Gaza. Basal said clearing the explosives could take years and require millions of dollars.

For Palestinians, the situation is a race against time. Al Jazeera’s Khoudary said civilians are pressing for faster progress: “They want reconstruction, they want freedom of movement, and they want to see and feel that the ceasefire is going to make it.”

Study finds that rates soar to 90 percent in some regions as humanitarian crises compound childhood exploitation.

Nearly two-thirds of South Sudanese children are engaged in the worst forms of child labour, with rates reaching as high as 90 percent in the hardest-hit regions, according to a government study released with the charity Save the Children.

The National Child Labour Study, published on Friday, surveyed more than 418 households across seven states and found that 64 percent of children aged between five and 17 are trapped in forced labour, sexual exploitation, theft and conflict.

The findings reveal a crisis far more complex than poverty alone, intensified by relentless flooding, the spread of disease, and conflict that have uprooted families and left millions on the brink of hunger.

In Kapoeta South, near the border with Uganda, nine out of 10 children work in gold mining, pastoralism and farming instead of attending school, the report said.

Yambio region, the country’s southwest, recorded similarly dire rates, with local conflict and child marriage driving children into labour.

Children typically start with simple jobs before being drawn into increasingly dangerous and exploitative work, the report found. About 10 percent of those surveyed reported involvement with armed groups, particularly in Akobo, Bentiu and Kapoeta South counties.

The types of exploitation children face differ by gender. Boys are more likely to work in dangerous industries or join armed groups, while girls disproportionately face forced marriage, household servitude and sexual abuse.

‘A crisis that goes beyond poverty’

Knowing the law does not stop child exploitation, researchers found.

The surveys showed that 70 percent of children stuck in dangerous or illegal work lives came from homes with adults who were familiar with legal protections. Two-thirds of children were unaware that help existed.

“When nearly two-thirds of a country’s children are working – and in some areas, almost every child – it signals a crisis that goes beyond poverty,” said Chris Nyamandi, Save the Children’s South Sudan country director.

South Sudan’s child labour prevalence vastly exceeds regional patterns. While East Africa has the continent’s worst record at 30 percent, according to ILO-UNICEF data, South Sudan’s 64 percent is more than double that figure.

“Education remains the strongest protective factor,” Nyamandi said, noting that children who attend school are far less likely to be exploited.

The government acknowledged the crisis at the report’s launch in Juba. Deng Tong, undersecretary at the Ministry of Labour, said officials would use the evidence as a “critical foundation for action”.

The report comes as nearly one million people have been impacted by severe flooding across South Sudan, with 335,000 displaced and more than 140 health facilities damaged or submerged.

The country faces a related malaria outbreak with more than 104,000 cases reported in the past week, while 7.7 million people confront acute hunger, the United Nations said.

South Sudan has also been gripped by fears of renewed civil war. A fragile 2018 peace deal between President Salva Kiir and First Vice President Riek Machar appears increasingly strained, with armed clashes now occurring on a scale not seen since 2017, according to UN investigators.

Machar was arrested in March and charged in September with treason, murder and crimes against humanity. He has rejected all charges.

About 300,000 people have fled the country this year as violence has escalated.

The largest US city is among more than 2,000 other municipalities pursuing similar lawsuits.

New York City has filed a lawsuit accusing Facebook, Google, Snapchat, TikTok and other online platforms of fuelling a mental health crisis among children by addicting them to social media.

The 327-page complaint filed on Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan seeks damages from Facebook and Instagram owner Meta Platforms, Google and YouTube owner Alphabet, Snapchat owner Snap and TikTok owner ByteDance. It accused the defendants of gross negligence and causing a public nuisance.

The city joined other governments, school districts and individuals pursuing about 2,050 similar lawsuits in nationwide litigation in the Oakland, California, federal court.

New York City is among the largest plaintiffs with a population of 8.48 million, including about 1.8 million under age 18. Its school and healthcare systems are also plaintiffs.

Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said allegations concerning YouTube are “simply not true”, in part because it is a streaming service and not a social network where people catch up with friends.

The other defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A spokesperson for New York City’s law department said the city withdrew from litigation announced by Mayor Eric Adams in February 2024 and pending in California state courts so it could join the federal litigation.

According to Wednesday’s complaint, the defendants designed their platforms to “exploit the psychology and neurophysiology of youth” and drive compulsive use in pursuit of profit.

The complaint said 77.3 percent of New York City high school students admitted to spending three or more hours a day on “screen time” including TV, computers and smartphones, contributing to lost sleep and chronic school absences.

New York City’s health commissioner declared social media a public health hazard in January 2024, and the city, including its schools, has had to spend more taxpayer dollars to address the resulting youth mental health crisis, the complaint said.

The city also blamed social media for an increase in “subway surfing”, or riding atop or off the sides of moving trains. At least 16 subway surfers have died since 2023, including two girls aged 12 and 13 this month, police data show.

“Defendants should be held to account for the harms their conduct has inflicted,” the city said. “As it stands now, [the] plaintiffs are left to abate the nuisance and foot the bill.”

Programme, which started after Korean War as a way of removing mixed-race children from society, violated human rights.

South Korea’s president has apologised for a notorious foreign adoption scheme set up after the 1950-53 Korean War that caused “anxiety, pain, and confusion” to more than 14,000 children sent abroad.

President Lee Jae-myung said in a Facebook post on Thursday that he was offering “heartfelt apology and words of comfort” to South Koreans adopted abroad and their adoptive and birth families, seven months after a Truth and Reconciliation Commission said the programme violated the human rights of adoptees.

The commission, which investigated complaints from 367 adoptees in Europe, the United States and Australia, held the government accountable for facilitating adoptions through fraudulent practices, including falsifying records to portray children as abandoned orphans and switching identities.

Lee said he felt “heavy-hearted” when he thought about the “anxiety, pain and confusion” that South Korean adoptees would have suffered when they were sent abroad as children, and asked officials to formulate systems to safeguard the human rights of adoptees and support their efforts to find their birth parents.

Mass international adoptions began after the Korean War as a way to remove mixed-race children born to local mothers and American GI fathers from a society that emphasised ethnic homogeneity, with more than 140,000 children sent overseas between 1955 and 1999.

Foreign adoptions have continued in more recent times, with more than 100 children on average, often babies born to unmarried women who face ostracism in a conservative society, still being sent abroad for adoption each year in the 2020s.

After years of delay, South Korea in July ratified The Hague Adoption Convention, an international treaty meant to safeguard international adoptions. The treaty took effect in South Korea on Wednesday.

Former president Kim Dae-jung apologised during a meeting with overseas adoptees in 1998, saying: “From the bottom of my heart, I am truly sorry. I deeply feel that we have committed a grave wrong against you.”

But he stopped short of acknowledging the state’s responsibility for the decades of malpractice.

Prime Minister of Malta Robert Abela spoke of the youngest victims of Israel’s war in Gaza who are given medical treatment in his country.

At least 85 Palestinians killed across the territory, including 12 at a makeshift shelter, as global leaders demand end to the war at UNGA.

At least 12 Palestinians, among them seven women and two children, have been killed in a strike on a stadium sheltering displaced families in the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza, as Israel pressed ahead with its relentless attacks despite calls for a ceasefire from world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly.

The al-Ahli Stadium, which has been converted into a makeshift refuge for Palestinians fleeing the Israeli onslaught, became the site of another massacre on Wednesday.

“I only had what I had in my hand. I left with nothing,” Najwa, a displaced woman from Gaza City, told Al Jazeera. “We are frightened. Transportation is expensive. We can’t pay to bring our things.”

‘Inflicting terror’

Israel’s assault on Gaza intensified overnight, with at least 85 Palestinians killed across the territory on Wednesday – more than double the number of those killed yesterday.

As the UN warned that Israel’s military is “inflicting terror on the Palestinian population of Gaza City and forcing tens of thousands to flee”, Israeli military chief of staff Eyal Zamir claimed Palestinians were being pushed southward “for their safety”.

But UN investigators have rejected those claims. A commission of inquiry this week concluded that Israel’s actions are aimed at establishing permanent control over Gaza while ensuring a Jewish majority in the occupied West Bank and inside Israel.

Zamir added that “most of Gaza’s population has already left Gaza City” and that the army “will continue a systematic and thorough advance” into the enclave’s largest urban centre.

Since the war began on October 7, 2023, at least 65,419 Palestinians have been killed and 167,160 wounded, with thousands more believed to be buried beneath the rubble. Israel launched what campaigners say is a war of vengeance after 1,139 people were killed in Israel in a Hamas-led attack in October 2023. About 200 were taken captive by the Palestinian fighters, out of which more than 40 still remain in Gaza.

Condemnation at the United Nations

At the UN General Assembly in New York, Israel’s war on Gaza has dominated proceedings, drawing condemnation from leaders across the world.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian told world leaders: “If you have no sympathy for human pain, the name of human you cannot pertain. Those criminals who bully by murdering children are not worthy of the name ‘human being’, and they shall never prove to be trustworthy partners.”

Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa also demanded an immediate ceasefire: “We stand firmly with the people of Gaza, its children and women and all peoples facing violations and aggression. We call for an immediate end to the war.”

Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide told Al Jazeera that quiet talks are taking place on ending the conflict, building on the “New York Declaration” roadmap endorsed by 142 states in July.

“Those of us who are closest to the Israeli position are beginning to understand that we cannot just continue with this endless, senseless war, and that includes the United States,” he said.

Meanwhile, US special envoy Steve Witkoff said Washington was “hopeful … even confident that in the coming days we’ll be able to announce some sort of breakthrough” and confirmed that President Donald Trump’s 21-point peace plan had been circulated among world leaders.

But previous peace proposals have been derailed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Earlier this month, Netanyahu ordered the assassination of Hamas leaders gathering in Doha to discuss a peace proposal by Trump.

The Israeli leader unilaterally pulled out of the last ceasefire agreement on March 18 and launched fierce air strikes and imposed a total aid blockade, resulting in famine and starvation deaths. He faces an arrest warrant for war crimes issued by the International Criminal Court.

As Israel becomes increasingly isolated, protests have erupted in Tel Aviv. Hundreds gathered at Ben Gurion airport to denounce Netanyahu as he departed for the UN meeting.

Before leaving, the Israeli prime minister once again rejected international calls for a Palestinian state. “The shameful surrender of some leaders to Palestinian terrorism will not bind Israel in any way,” his office said.

At least four children were killed in the latest Israeli air strike on a school which was being used as a shelter for displaced Palestinians in Gaza. Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili shows us the aftermath of the strike.

Israel has bombed and destroyed the tallest residential building in Gaza, the Al-Ghafri high-rise, as it launched a massive wave of strikes on Gaza City on Monday evening, forcing hundreds of thousands of residents to continue to flee the city.

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, says Israel is using unconventional weapons to forcibly evict Palestinians from Gaza City, the largest urban centre in the enclave.

Israeli media source Channel 12 reported that “exceptionally intense air strikes” were concentrated in the city’s north and west, while the Palestinian Civil Defence said at least 50 multistorey buildings had been levelled in recent weeks as Israeli forces intensified attacks to seize the city.

Other neighbourhoods have been reduced to rubble. In Zeitoun, more than 1,500 homes and buildings have been destroyed since early August, leaving entire blocks with nothing left standing.

For the third day in a row, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Israel Katz has posted videos of the attacks. “The terror tower… crashes into the sea off Gaza. Sinking the centres of terror and incitement,” he wrote on X. Katz offered no evidence for his claim that the residential tower was being used by Hamas.

Israel has repeatedly attacked residential areas, schools and hospitals during its 23 months of genocidal war.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health said that 51 Palestinians, including six-year-old twins, were killed in Gaza City in the past 24 hours.

Three journalists were also killed in separate Israeli strikes: reporter Mohammed al-Kouifi in the Nassr neighbourhood, photographer and broadcast engineer Ayman Haniyeh, and journalist Iman al-Zamili. These killings take the number of journalists and media workers killed in Israel’s war on Gaza to nearly 280. Media watchdogs say this war is the deadliest conflict for journalists.

Since October 2023, Israel has killed at least 64,905 Palestinians and wounded 164,926, with thousands more still buried under rubble.

‘Striking every area’

Israel’s security cabinet approved a plan in August to seize Gaza City, which has led to relentless bombardment, forcing residents south towards al-Mawasi.

Many Palestinians say they do not believe they will ever be allowed to return, and fear the journey itself.

“For more than three days, they have been hitting every school and emptying Shati camp [near north Gaza’s coast], striking every area. You cannot even move,” one resident told Al Jazeera.

“That is why I decided to leave with my family – my daughters and my wife – and head to Khan Younis. I don’t even have a tent. I only took a few things; I couldn’t take anything from my home.”

Being pushed into al-Mawasi, the area Israel has designated a “safe zone”, offers no safety as Israel continues to attack the site. The Health Ministry has also said the area lacks the “basic necessities of life, including water, food [and] health services”, and warned of “dangerous” disease outbreaks.

It added that displaced people are subjected to “direct targeting and killing both inside the camps and when attempting to leave them”, in violation of international law.

Israel continues to block aid

Israeli forces shot dead at least five Palestinians waiting for food assistance near al-Mawasi, according to the Nasser Medical Complex.

Meanwhile, the famine is deepening in the Strip. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) declared a famine in northern Gaza on August 22.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that out of the 17 humanitarian missions coordinated with Israel on Sunday, only four were permitted. A mission to deliver water tanks to the north was also denied entry.

Albanese, the UN special rapporteur, told Al Jazeera on Thursday that Israel must be held accountable.

“This is a genocide that could have never happened without the support and involvement of a number of actors,” she said, pointing to Israel’s allies and private sector partners.

Albanese urged governments to “put an end to Israeli impunity” and demand adherence to international law.

The Israeli military onslaught on Gaza City continues nonstop, resulting in the killing of more than 50 Palestinians, including aid seekers, as it seeks to seize control of the enclave’s biggest urban centre – home to some 1 million people.

At least 105 Palestinians were killed across Gaza on Tuesday as Israeli strikes levelled densely populated areas, particularly al-Sabra neighbourhood, which has been under attack for days. At least 32 of those were killed while seeking aid.

The attacks are intensified as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel is facing a “decisive stage” of the war as it prepares to seize Gaza City despite global condemnation.

“Palestinians are in a cage in Gaza City right now, trying to survive as many air strikes as possible. Wherever they go, the air strikes follow them,” said Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary.

“They are also dying from the food and aid blockade as they are not able to get the basic means of sustenance,” she said, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

Palestinians are struggling to survive the dual threats of targeted attacks and starvation, with at least 13 people dying of starvation in the past 24 hours, bringing the total hunger-related death toll since the war began to 361. Eighty-three of those deaths have been recorded since a global hunger monitor confirmed famine conditions in Gaza on August 22.

Among those killed on Tuesday were at least 21 people, including seven children, who were struck by an Israeli drone while queuing for water in the al-Mawasi area near Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

Images posted online by Palestinian Civil Defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal showed children’s bodies and water containers stained with blood at the attack site, which Israel had previously declared a so-called “safe zone”.

“They were standing in line to fill up water … when the occupation forces directly targeted them, turning their search for life into a new massacre,” Basal said on Tuesday.

In Gaza City, an Israeli strike on the al-Af family home killed 10 people, mostly women and children, Gaza officials said.

“These crimes expose the criminal fascist nature of the enemy,” Gaza’s Government Media Office said in a statement, accusing Washington of complicity. It called Israel’s actions “war crimes under international law” and urged the UN Security Council to halt the “brutal genocide”.

Two more journalists, Rasmi Salem of al-Manara and Eman al-Zamli, were killed in the latest attacks, bringing the total number of journalists killed since October 7, 2023, to more than 270. The war in Gaza has become the deadliest conflict for media workers ever recorded, press watchdogs say.

Israel starts ground assault in Gaza City

On Tuesday, thousands of Israeli reservists reported for duty as efforts to end the war seemed to be stalling.

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said Hamas had accepted a ceasefire proposal, but Israel had yet to respond.

“There has been no Israeli response yet,” he said, adding that negotiations with mediators and the United States had stalled. He warned that Israel’s plan to occupy Gaza “poses a threat to everyone”, including Israeli captives.

But Israel has tightened its siege of Gaza City in recent days, barring even limited humanitarian aid deliveries.

Israeli Army Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir confirmed ground operations were intensifying. “We are going to deepen our operation,” he told reservists as tens of thousands of troops were called up. Israeli media reported that 365 soldiers have refused to report for duty.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, said in a video statement on Tuesday that “we are working to defeat Hamas.”

Yemen’s Houthi movement said its forces launched four drones targeting Israel’s General Staff headquarters near Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport, a power station, and the port of Ashdod, days after Israel killed Yemeni Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi along with top officials in Sanaa.

The group claimed its drones “successfully hit their targets.” It also said a missile and drone attack struck a cargo vessel in the Red Sea for violating a ban on entering Israeli ports.

International ‘indifference’ to Palestine

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry welcomed Belgium’s decision to recognise the State of Palestine on Tuesday and urged other nations to follow suit, saying it was “in line with international law and UN resolutions” and necessary to halt “genocide, displacement, starvation, and annexation”.

In a separate statement, the ministry accused the international community of “alarming” indifference to Gaza’s economic collapse and Israel’s seizure of Palestinian tax revenues. It called for urgent financial support to “enhance the resilience of citizens and their steadfastness on their homeland’s soil”.

Newborns are being forced to share an incubator at Gaza City’s al-Helou International Hospital as rising cases of acute malnutrition overwhelm the wards. Doctors say hospitals are running out of space amid Israel’s man-made famine.

Emergency food supplies are running out in Nigeria, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan, Save the Children warns.

Millions of children across four African countries could die of malnutrition in the next three months, Save the Children has warned, as emergency food supplies dwindle as a result of international aid cuts.

Save the Children said on Thursday that Nigeria, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan were expected to run out of so-called “ready-to-use therapeutic food” (RUTF), a nutritional paste that has a long shelf life and does not need refrigeration.

In Nigeria alone, the lives of 3.5 million children under age five who are suffering from severe acute malnutrition will be under threat without access to treatment and nutrition support, the humanitarian group said.

“Imagine being a parent with a severely malnourished child,” Yvonne Arunga, Save the Children’s regional director for East and Southern Africa, said in a statement.

“Now imagine that the only thing that could help your child bounce back from the brink of death is therapeutic food and that food is out of stock when it was once available.”

The warning comes just months after the United Nations announced sweeping programme cuts in June amid what the UN’s humanitarian office described as “the deepest funding cuts ever to hit the international humanitarian sector”.

“We have been forced into a triage of human survival,” UN aid chief Tom Fletcher said at the time.

“The math is cruel, and the consequences are heartbreaking. Too many people will not get the support they need, but we will save as many lives as we can with the resources we are given.”

Key international donors, led notably by the United States, have drastically scaled back foreign aid funding, leading to widespread concern that critical aid – from food and healthcare to poverty reduction – will be affected in countries around the world.

In July, as part of US President Donald Trump’s push to scale back federal spending, Congress approved a package that slashed the country’s foreign aid expenditures by about $8bn.

Last month, Doctors Without Borders (known by its French acronym MSF) reported that at least 652 malnourished children had died at its facilities in northern Nigeria in the first half of 2025 due to a lack of timely care.

“We are currently witnessing massive budget cuts, particularly from the United States, the United Kingdom, and other European countries, which are having a real impact on the treatment of malnourished children,” said Ahmed Aldikhari, MSF’s country representative in Nigeria.

On Thursday, Save the Children said staff at one of its clinics in northwestern Kenya have been forced to try to get food from other facilities to help feed malnourished children.

“And if [the children] are not supported, I know very soon [we] will be losing them,” said Sister Winnie, who runs the facility in Turkana.

About 105,000 RUTF cartons are needed through the end of the year across Kenya, Save the Children said, but only about 79,000 have been secured so far, with stocks expected to run out in October.

The group said that overall, shortfalls in nutrition funding could cut off treatment to 15.6 million people in 18 countries around the world, including more than 2.3 million severely malnourished children this year.

The situation is expected to deteriorate further in 2026, it added.

Mohammed Ibrahim, a 16-year-old Palestinian American, has been held in Israeli prison without contact with his family since being illegally detained in February. His relatives and rights groups are calling for his release, citing his worsening health and lack of due process.

Huda Abu Naja lies weak and emaciated on a thin mattress in her family’s tent in a displacement camp in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah.

The 12-year-old Palestinian girl’s arms are painfully thin, and the bones on her torso are protruding from under her skin, a telltale sign of her acute malnutrition.

“My daughter has been suffering from acute malnutrition since March when Israel closed Gaza’s borders,” Huda’s mother, Somia Abu Naja, tells Al Jazeera, stroking her daughter’s face.

“She spent three months in hospitals, but her condition did not improve,” said Somia, explaining that she decided to bring Huda back to the family’s tent after witnessing five children die of starvation at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis.

“She used to weigh 35 kilos [77lbs], but now she’s down to 20 [44lbs],” Somia added.

Huda is just one of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children suffering from malnutrition in Gaza, according to local health authorities, as Israel continues to block food and other humanitarian aid from entering the bombarded enclave.

On Friday, a United Nations-backed hunger monitor confirmed for the first time that more than half a million people were experiencing famine in northern Gaza – the first such designation ever recorded in the Middle East.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system warned that the figure could reach 614,000 as famine is expected to spread to the Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis governorates by the end of September.

According to the Health Ministry in Gaza, more than 280 people, including more than 110 children, have died due to Israel-induced starvation since the country’s war on Gaza began nearly two years ago.

Children are being hit hard by the crisis, the IPC said on Friday, with an estimated 132,000 children under the age of five projected to be at risk of death from acute malnutrition by June 2026.

Dr Ahmad al-Farra, the chief paediatric physician at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, said 120 children are seeking treatment for malnutrition at the facility, while tens of thousands more are suffering in displacement camps with little assistance.

He told Al Jazeera that children in Gaza will suffer the consequences of malnutrition for the rest of their lives, as hospitals in the enclave are lacking the resources and supplies to respond to the crisis.

Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the director of Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, also told Al Jazeera that an estimated 320,000 children across Gaza were in a state of severe malnutrition.

He said all wounded patients in hospitals were suffering from malnutrition, as well, amid Israel’s continued blockade of the enclave.

Israel has rejected the IPC’s findings, with its foreign ministry saying – despite mounds of evidence – that there was “no famine in Gaza”.

While Israel has allowed limited supplies into the territory in recent weeks amid global outrage over the starvation crisis, the UN and humanitarian groups say what is being allowed in remains woefully insufficient.

An Israeli-backed aid distribution scheme known as GHF has also been condemned as ineffective and deadly, with Israeli forces and US contractors killing more than 2,000 Palestinians as they sought food at the sites since late May.

The IPC famine classification has triggered a renewed wave of calls for Israel to urgently allow a massive and sustained influx of aid into Gaza.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday that the famine was a “man-made disaster, a moral indictment, and a failure of humanity itself”.

UN aid chief Tom Fletcher also said starvation was occurring “within a few hundred metres of food” as aid trucks were stuck at border crossings due to Israeli restrictions. He demanded that Israel allow food and medicine in “at the massive scale required”.

A United States federal judge has granted a temporary block against a Texas law that would require the Ten Commandments from the Christian Bible to be displayed in the classrooms of every public school.

On Wednesday, US District Judge Fred Biery issued a preliminary injunction against Texas’s Senate Bill 10, which was slated to take effect on September 1.

Texas would have become the largest state to impose such a requirement on public schools.

But Judge Biery’s decision falls in line with two other court decisions over the past month: one in Arkansas and one in Louisiana, both of which ruled such laws are unconstitutional.

Biery’s decision opens by citing the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which bars the government from passing laws “respecting an establishment of religion”. That clause underpins the separation of church and state in the US.

The judge then argues that even “passive” displays of the Ten Commandments would risk injecting religious discourse into the classroom, thereby violating that separation.

“Even though the Ten Commandments would not be affirmatively taught, the captive audience of students likely would have questions, which teachers would feel compelled to answer. That is what they do,” Biery wrote.

“Teenage boys, being the curious hormonally driven creatures they are, might ask: ‘Mrs Walker, I know about lying and I love my parents, but how do I do adultery?’ Truly an awkward moment for overworked and underpaid educators, who already have to deal with sex education issues.”

Biery’s decision, however, only applies to the 11 school districts represented among the defendants, including Alamo Heights, Houston, Austin, Fort Bend and Plano.

The case stemmed from a complaint made by several parents of school-aged children, who were represented by groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

One of the plaintiffs was a San Antonio rabbi, Mara Nathan, who felt the version of the Ten Commandments slated to be displayed ran contrary to Jewish teachings. She applauded Wednesday’s injunction in a statement released by the ACLU.

“Children’s religious beliefs should be instilled by parents and faith communities, not politicians and public schools,” Nathan said.

Other plaintiffs included Christian families who feared the schoolhouse displays of the Ten Commandments would lead to the teaching of religious interpretations and concepts they might object to.

The Texas state government, however, has argued that the Ten Commandments symbolise an important part of US culture and therefore should be a mandatory presence in schools.

“The Ten Commandments are a cornerstone of our moral and legal heritage, and their presence in classrooms serves as a reminder of the values that guide responsible citizenship,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement. He pledged to appeal Wednesday’s ruling.

But in his 55-page decision, Judge Biery, who was appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1994, drew on a range of cultural references – from Christian scripture to the 1970s pop duo Sonny and Cher and the actress Greta Garbo – to sketch a history of the dangers of imposing religion on the public.

“The displays are likely to pressure the child-Plaintiffs into religious observance, meditation on, veneration, and adoption of the State’s favored religious scripture,” Biery wrote at one point.

He also said such displays risk “suppressing expression of [the children’s] own religious or nonreligious backgrounds and beliefs while at school”.

Biery even offered a winking, personal anecdote to illustrate the power that governments can hold over the adoption of religion.

“Indeed, forty years ago a Methodist preacher told a then much younger judge, ‘Fred, if you had been born in Tibet, you would be a Buddhist,’” Biery wrote.

A separate federal case involving Dallas area schools is also challenging the Ten Commandment requirement. It names the Texas Education Agency as a defendant.

Such cases are likely to eventually reach the Supreme Court, which currently has a six-to-three conservative supermajority and has shown sympathy for cases of religious displays.

In the 2022 case Kennedy v Bremerton School District, for instance, the Supreme Court sided with a high school football coach who argued he had the right to hold post-game prayers, despite fears that such practices could violate the First Amendment. The coach had been fired for his actions.

Judge Biery concluded Wednesday’s decision with a nod to how controversial such cases can be. But he appealed for common understanding with a prayer-like flourish.

“For those who disagree with the Court’s decision and who would do so with threats, vulgarities and violence, Grace and Peace unto you,” Biery wrote. “May humankind of all faiths, beliefs and non-beliefs be reconciled one to another. Amen.”

Israel’s military has stepped up attacks on Gaza City as part of its expanded operations aimed at seizing the last major population centre in the enclave, forcing tens of thousands of starving Palestinians to flee again.

The Gaza City neighbourhoods of Zeitoun, Sabra, Remal and Tuffah have particularly borne the brunt of the Israeli bombardments in recent days as a spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Israel’s plans to forcibly displace Palestinians to southern Gaza would increase their suffering.

Thousands of families have fled Zeitoun, where days of continuous strikes have left the neighbourhood devastated. At least seven people were killed on Sunday when an Israeli air strike hit al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City.

Also on Sunday, the Israeli military said tents and equipment to erect shelters will be provided to the Palestinians who have been displaced multiple times in 22 months of war, which has been called an act of genocide by multiple rights organisations.

Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said artillery fire and air raids have forced many from their homes.

“The Zeitoun neighbourhood is a very densely populated area, home to many families, including those who have been sheltering there. Residents were surprised when the artillery shelling and the intensive air raids started. Some people stayed. Others started moving. As the violence escalated, many were forced to evacuate – hungry, devastated and displaced yet again, leaving behind everything they had,” Khoudary said.

‘New wave of genocide’

Israel last week announced plans to push deeper into Gaza City and remove its residents to the south, a move that has drawn international condemnation.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, said civilians would be moved to “safe zones” even though these areas have also been repeatedly bombed.

Nearly 90 percent of the 2.4 million Palestinians in Gaza remain displaced, and an overwhelming number of them are now facing starvation. At least seven more Palestinians died of starvation in Gaza in 24 hours, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said on Sunday, raising the war’s hunger-related death toll to 258, including 110 children, as a result of Israel’s ongoing siege of the enclave.

On Sunday, Israel killed nearly at least 57 Palestinians, 38 of them aid seekers, taking the total number of Palestinians killed since the war began in October 2023 to nearly 62,000.

Hamas denounced Israel’s plan to set up tents in the south as a cover for mass displacement.

The group said in a statement that the measure amounted to a “new wave of genocide and displacement” and described it as a “blatant deception intended to cover up a brutal crime that the occupation forces prepare to execute”.

There was an atmosphere of despair in Gaza after Israel’s latest forced displacement order, Maram Humaid, Al Jazeera’s online correspondent from Gaza, posted on X.

“There are no words to describe how people in Gaza feel right now. Fear, helplessness, and pain fill everyone as they face a new wave of displacement and an Israeli ground operation,” she posted.

“Family and friends’ WhatsApp groups are full of silent screams and sorrow. God knows people have suffered enough. Our minds are almost paralysed from thinking.”

Displaced and desperate Palestinians are scrambling for scraps of food as they face more bombardment from Israeli forces.

The UN says one in five children in Gaza is malnourished as tens of thousands rely on charity kitchens, whose small portions of food can be their only meal of the day.

“I came at 6am to the charity kitchen to get food for my children, and if I don’t get any now, I have to come back in the evening for another chance,” said Zeinab Nabahan, displaced from the Jabalia refugee camp, told Al Jazeera.

“My children are starving on small amounts of lentils or rice. My children haven’t had bread or any breakfast. They’ve been waiting for me to leave with whatever I can get from the charity kitchen.”

Another resident, Tayseer Naim, told Al Jazeera that “had it not been for God and charity kitchens”, he would not have survived. “We come here at 8am and suffer to get lentils or rice. We suffer a lot, and we leave at midday and walk for about a kilometre.”

‘Man-made famine’

On Sunday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) warned that Gaza is facing a “man-made famine” and urged a return to a UN-led distribution system.

“We are very, very close to losing our collective humanity,” Juliette Touma, the agency’s communications director, said in a post on X.

She said the crisis had been fuelled by “deliberate attempts to replace the UN-coordinated humanitarian system through the politically motivated ‘GHF’.”

She warned the alternative system promoted by Israel and the United States “brings dehumanisation, chaos, and death” and stressed: “We must return to a unified, UN-led coordination and distribution system based on international humanitarian law. The abomination must end.”

The World Food Programme (WFP) says despite its teams “doing everything” to deliver food assistance in Gaza, current supplies only meet 47 percent of the intended target.

According to the UN agency, around 500,000 people are now on the “brink of famine”, and that only a ceasefire would allow food assistance to be scaled up to the required levels.

The Government Media Office in Gaza said Israel was deliberately starving Palestinians by blocking essential goods, including baby formula, nutritional supplements, meat, fish, dairy products, and frozen fruits and vegetables.

In a statement on Telegram, it said Israel was carrying out “a systematic policy of engineered starvation and slow killing against more than 2.4 million people in Gaza, including more than 1.2 million Palestinian children, in a complete crime of genocide”.

It warned that more than 40,000 infants face severe malnutrition while at least 100,000 other children and patients are in a similar condition.

Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network in Gaza City, told Al Jazeera that aid workers were struggling to respond as resources collapse.

“We are trying to do our best. We are … part of this social fabric. We are linked to the people here, and we are staying with them while Israel threatens to apply its plans to forcibly evacuate Gaza City and destroy the rest of Gaza. There are 1.1 million people here, most of them elderly, women, children and people with disabilities,” Shawa said.

He said workers continued to provide limited meals, medical care and education but warned that “the humanitarian system is collapsing” as Israel strikes aid facilities and restricts supplies.

Maiduguri, Nigeria – Sometimes, it feels to Zara Ali as though her daughter was born already sick in the womb.

On a recent weekday, the 30-year-old mother clutched the ill toddler in her lap as she sat outside a government hospital in Maiduguri, the capital of northeast Nigeria’s Borno State. The two had just finished yet another doctor’s appointment in hopes of curing the child.

Although cranky as any other sick two-year-old, it is Amina’s hair – brownish and seemingly bald in several spots – that’s a visible sign of the malnourishment doctors had previously diagnosed. Yet, despite months of treatment with a protein-heavy, ready-to-eat paste, Ali says progress has been slow, and her daughter might require more hospital visits.

“She gets sick, gets a little better, and then falls ill again,” she said, frustrated. Already, Ali and her family have had to move homes several times because of the Boko Haram conflict. They were displaced from Damboa town, about 89km (55 miles) away, and now live in Maiduguri as displaced persons.

Adding to her woes is the reduced access to care in recent months as several aid clinics she visits for free treatment have begun to scale back operations, or in some cases, completely shut their services. “Honestly, their interventions were really helpful, and we need them to come back and help our children,” Ali said.

Amina is only one of some five million children across northeast and northwest Nigeria suffering from malnourishment in what experts have called the region’s most severe food crisis in years. The troubled northeast region has, for a decade and a half, been in the throes of a conflict waged by the armed group Boko Haram, and prolonged insecurity has disrupted food supplies. In the northwest, bandit groups are causing similar upheavals, resulting in a hunger crisis that state governments are struggling to contain.

Compounding the problem this year are the massive, brutal funding cuts roiling aid organisations, which have often stepped in to help by providing food assistance to the 2.3 million displaced northeast Nigerians. Many of those organisations were dependent on funds from the United States, which, since February, has reduced contributions to aid programmes globally by about 75 percent.

The World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations food aid agency and the world’s largest provider of food assistance, was forced to shut down more than half of all its nutrition clinics across the northeast in August, Emmanuel Bigenimana, who leads northeast Nigeria operations, told Al Jazeera from the agency’s site in Maiduguri. Some 300,000 children are cut off from needed nutrition supplements, he said.

Already, in July, WFP doled out its last reserves of grains for displaced adults and families, Bigenimana added, standing by a row of half-empty tent warehouses. A few men removed grain sacks from the tents and loaded them onto trucks bound for neighbouring Chad, a country also caught in complex crises. For Nigeria, he said, which is in the lean season before harvest, there was no more food.

Insecurity fuels food crisis

Northeast Nigeria should be a food basket for the country, due to its fertile, savannah vegetation suitable for cultivating nuts and grains. However, since the Boko Haram conflict broke out, the food supply has dwindled. Climate shocks in the increasingly arid region have added to the problems.

Boko Haram aims to control the territory and has been active since 2011. The group’s operations are mainly in Borno, neighbouring states in the northeast, and across the border in Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. It gained global notoriety in 2014 for the kidnapping of female students in Chibok. Internal fractures and Nigeria’s military response have reduced the group’s capacity in recent years, but it still controls some territory, and a breakaway faction is affiliated with ISIL (ISIS). More than 35,000 people have been killed in attacks by the group, and more than 2 million are displaced.

Before the insecurity, families in the region, particularly outside the urban metropolis of Maiduguri, survived on subsistence farming, tilling plots of land, and selling surplus harvest. These days, that is hardly an option. The military has hunkered down in garrisoned towns since 2019 to avoid troop losses. It is hard to find cultivating space amid the trenches and security barriers constructed in such places, security analyst Kabir Adamu of intelligence firm Beacon Consulting, told Al Jazeera. Those who venture outside the towns risk being targeted by armed fighters.

In rural areas not under army control, Boko Haram operates as a sort of government, exploiting villagers to generate money.

“The armed actors collect taxes from them to use land for farming,” Adamu said, adding that for rural farmers, those taxes often prove heavy on the pockets. In more unlucky scenarios, farmers have been killed if they were believed to be military informants. In January, 40 farmers were executed in the town of Baga. Fishermen have similarly been targeted.

The vicious cycle has repeated itself for years, and the compounding effect is the current food crisis, experts say.

Just 45 minutes from Maiduguri, in Konduga town, farmer Mustapha Modu, 55, tilled the earth in anticipation of rainfall on a cool weekday. He had just returned from a short journey to Maiduguri, braving the risky highways to buy seedlings in hopes of a good season.

Even as Modu planted, he worried that harvest might be impossible. There are widespread fears that Boko Haram fighters often lie in wait and then pounce on farmers to seize harvests. At one time, he said, his family of three wives and 17 children depended on handouts, but those hardly reached Konduga any more, so he had to do something.

“It’s been a long time since we saw them in our village,” Modu said of food aid distributors. “That’s why I managed to go and get some seedlings, even though the insurgents are still on our neck.”

Aid cuts risk more ‘violence’

The UN and its agencies were the focus of aid cuts from Washington in April, leading to the WFP receiving zero aid from the US this year, Bigenimana said. Like the US, other donors such as the European Union and the United Kingdom have also cut back on aid, instead diverting money to security as tensions remain high over Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The agency catered to some 1.3 million displaced people and others in hard-to-reach areas, fringe locations accessible only by helicopter. For children, the agency ran several nutrition clinics and supported government hospitals with ready-to-use food, a protein mixture made mostly of groundnut, which can rapidly stabilise a malnourished child.

Funding cuts caused the WFP to begin rationing supplies in recent months. In July, resources in Nigeria were completely emptied. At least $130m is required for the agency to speedily get back on track with its operations here, Bigenimana said. Extended lack of support, he said, could push more people into danger.

“People are attempting to go and get firewood to sell outside the secure points,” the official said. “Even when we delay distribution on normal days, people protest. So we are expecting that, and it could get violent.”

Multiple other NGOs across the region were also hit by the Trump aid cuts. They not only provided food aid or nutrition treatment, but also medical services, and crucial vaccines children need in the first years of life to guard against infectious diseases like measles.

Analysts like Adamu, however, criticise aid groups for what he said is their failure to create a system where people don’t rely on food aid. In Borno, the state government has, since 2021, gradually shut down camps for internally displaced people and resettled some in their communities. The aim, the government argues, is to reduce dependency and restore dignity. However, the move faces widespread backlash as aid agencies and rights organisations point out that some areas are still unsafe, and that displaced people simply move to other camps.

“They should have supported the government on security reforms for the state,” Adamu argued. That, he said, would have been a more sustainable way of empowering people and would have eased the food crisis.

Rain time, sick time

For now, the food crisis looks set to continue, and children in particular appear to be bearing the brunt, especially as heavy rains arrive.

Muhammad Bashir Abdullahi, an officer with medical aid group Doctors without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, told Al Jazeera that more malnourished children are being admitted to the organisation’s nutrition facility in Maiduguri since early August. It is possible, he said, that the shuttered services in other organisations were contributing to the higher numbers.

“We used to admit 200 children weekly, but last week we admitted up to 400 children,” Abdullahi said. MSF, which is not dependent on US aid, has recorded more than 6,000 malnourished children in its Maiduguri nutrition centre since January. Typically, children receive the protein paste, or in acute cases, a special milk solution. Abdullahi said more children are likely to be admitted in the coming weeks.

Back at the government hospital where Ali was seeking treatment for her daughter, another woman stopped outside the clinic with her children, twin baby boys.

One of them was sick, the mother, 33-year-old Fatima Muhammad, complained, and is suffering from a swollen head. This is the third hospital she was visiting, as two other facilities managed by NGOs were overwhelmed. Unfortunately, her son had not been accepting the protein paste, a sign that medical experts say signals acute malnutrition.

“His brother is sitting and crawling already, but he still cannot sit,” Muhammad said, her face squeezed in a frown. She blamed herself for not eating enough during her pregnancy, although she hardly had a choice. “I think that’s what affected them. I just need help for my son, nothing more.”